Anti-British
Feelings Reach Fever Pitch Amongst Iranians

Jack
Straw’s untimely statement, which coincided with the start of the street
protests against the Ayatollahs in Iran, has been interpreted as British
support for the clerical dictatorship amongst the Iranians. The Iranian
people’s anger reached fever pitch last night, as callers to the LA
based TV station repeatedly let off some of their frustration at the
British and European governments and Jack Straw in particular.

Iranians’
natural tendency for conspiracy theories and the historical relationship
between the British and the Shiite clergy has been identified by most
Iranians as the reason for the long overdue stay of the Ayatollahs, who
have ruled Iran for the past 24 years. Add to all of this the fanatical
support of Ema Nicholson for the Mullahs in Iran and one can start to see
why the Iranian people are so suspicious of the British establishment.

The
protests in Iran have now continued for the third night running. Last
night the fiercest clashes were reported in the Kurdistan Highway, when
the women protesters who had taken off their scarves were badly beaten by
the vigilantes. However the people’s anger at seeing beaten faces of
Iranian women then turned against the Baseej thugs who were chased and
beaten by the ordinary people. Some of the Baseej motorcycles were set on
fire in the highway and the people celebrated around them in the
traditional ways of Iran’s pre-Islamic fire festival. Between 500-600
arrests were reported last night in various locations at Felestin,
Amirabad, Laleh, Geesha and other districts.

The BBC
last night briefly mentioned the protests in its 10:00 O’clock news only
saying that Iran’s supreme leader has threatened to crack down on
protesters and that the protests have been instigated by the Americans.
Very short film footage of the protests was also shown.

Four
years ago in the aftermath of the Iranian student uprising, Tam Dalyel MP,
the father of the Commons during a parliamentary debate blamed the riots
on the sweltering July heat of Iran, where tempers can be tinder
dry. His comments caused great offence amongst Iranians.

Below is
how some Iranians remember the BBC world service in Persian reported a
street clash in Mashad, twenty-five years ago, during the revolution,
which brought on the Ayatollahs:

"An
injured woman was carried off on a stretcher, and as she was being carried
off her blood was dripping from the stretcher with her young daughter
holding her hand crying and shouting mother!… mother!"

Twenty-five
years ago, the BBC world service also read out Ayatollah Khomeini’s
statement in which he told all the military personnel in the barracks that
it was their religious duty before God and the Prophet to leave their
barracks.

The following exchange
of emails between Potkin Azarmehr and John Simpson, the
World Affairs Editor of the BBC, clearly shows that the British do not
think Iranians are humans and therefore the same rules of Human Rights
that apply to, for example the British, should apply to Iranians. Mr.
John Simpson goes farther and calls any Iranian who disagrees with his
views "rude".

This is what
Mr. John Simpson wrote in Sunday edition:

Simpson on Sunday: Why the US military is not about to go
charging into Iran

(Filed: 01/06/2003)

The rimless glasses glinted, the
harsh voice talked of threats and the sheltering of America's enemies and
hinted at regime change. Donald Rumsfeld, the man who saved Saddam
Hussein's bacon back in the 1980s by recommending that the United States
rescue him from certain defeat in the Iran-Iraq war, had found another
sabre to rattle: Iran must change its ways in order to avert American
wrath.

But is this a genuine threat, or
is it merely following up on the glorious victory in Iraq? The American
finger has, after all, been wagged at Syria and North Korea in recent
weeks: maybe it's just Iran's turn.

In the first instance, it seems to
be nothing more than a threat. Mr Rumsfeld does
the heavy breathing for the Bush administration: his is the voice that
comes on the phone and tells you to behave or someone will come round and
break your legs.

There are quieter, more
considered, less aggressive voices in Washington too: not so much that of
Colin Powell, since whatever moderating influence he once may have had
seems to have leaked away, but - for example - Ari Fleischer, the
soon-to-be-outgoing White House spokesman. When someone asked him if Iran
was next on the hitlist, he changed the subject: many Iranians wanted a
different regime, he said, and they were worth supporting. And when
President George W. Bush himself was asked on Friday by Russian state
television if Iran and Syria would be attacked, he said there were no
plans to do so.

No political plans, that is.
Military plans certainly exist to attack both countries - but then the US
military even has plans to attack Britain. These are merely war games;
meaningless except that they give the planners a sense of how difficult
the job might be. In the case of Iran, it would be pretty difficult. Let's
set the triumphalism aside for a moment, and look at what was achieved in
Iraq. Yes, it was a quick and rather well-fought operation. But so it
should have been: the world's two best military powers attacked a country
which had no air force, no new weaponry, and which had been systematically
weakened by 12 years of sanctions. The morale of its armed forces was
pathetically low – and yet it still put up sufficient of a fight to give
the generals and politicians a real scare after the first week of the
campaign. Imagine what a larger country with up-to-date forces and a pride
in itself might achieve.

In Iraq as in Afghanistan, the
poor quality of American troops as peacekeepers has demonstrated itself
thoroughly. This, and the lack of any serious thought about the concept of
nation-building directly hostilities were over, has given free rein to the
Shi'ite mullahs in southern Iraq and Baghdad. They filled the power vacuum
and are effectively running large parts of the country today.

Surprise, surprise. Whatever did
Mr Rumsfeld, his deputy, Paul Wolfowitz, and all the other super-hawks
expect? Did they really believe that after all the years of betrayal by
the administration of the elder George Bush and after the misery of those
sanctions, American troops would be greeted as liberators? They did, of
course, and - to my shame - so did I. At least I have owned up.

If Iraqis are allowed to hold free
elections, it will not be the American-supported Iraqi exiles who will get
the big votes; it will be the candidates of the Shi'ite mullahs whom most
of the 55 per cent of Iraqis who are Shi'ite will support. And the
mullahs, naturally and reasonably, have Iran behind them. For Mr Rumsfeld
or Tony Blair to warn Iran to steer clear of Iraqi politics is like
Beijing warning the United States or Britain not to support Chinese human
rights activists.

This will cause serious friction
with Iran. But the American military, which has a very sensible
understanding of what it can and can't do, will argue fiercely against any
attempt to attack Iran. Instead, there will be a return to the old tactic
of exile-support. All sorts of useless, corrupt and generally dodgy
characters, and a few decent ones, will get lashings of money from
Washington. Bombs will be exploded in bus stations (if it's done by our
side it's not terrorism). A blind eye will be turned to all sorts of
excesses. And as a result Iran, which should be reforming itself and
opening up in the way 80 per cent of its people want, will sink back into
extremism once again.

You can see it, I can see it, the
Foreign Office and the State Department can see it - but does Mr Rumsfeld
see it? I think we know the answer.

I was actually agreeing with what
you were saying and wasn't surprised either since I am normally a big fan
of your reporting, except when I got to the end paragraph:

"And as a result Iran, which
should be reforming itself and opening up in the way 80 per cent of its
people want, will sink back into extremism once again."

This weekend even Fatimeh
Haghighatjoo, the "GC filtered" Member of the Islamic Assembly,
stated that "this regime is not able to reform and there is no point
in us staying in parliament."

I would like to know where you got
the 80 percent figure from? and when you say Iran will sink back into
extremism once again, well what is it now? Isn't public hanging, flogging,
stoning, arbitrary arrests of dissidents, and even the imprisonment of the
lawyers defending their clients, extremist enough for you? Perhaps you
think this is the best Iranian people deserve, and as one Liberal member
of the House of Lords said "We should not apply our own standards of
human rights to Iran!!!"??

The Iranian people are actually
quite encouraged by the tough talking of the American administration and
it would be better if the British government talked in the same manner to
IRI as it does to Zimbabwe. By the way I think Zimbabwe is far less
extremist and despotic than the slamic Republic.

It may not have been your precise
intention, but this letter of yours is unacceptably rude.I have long made it a fixed rule never to enter into any discussion
with people who are incapable of maintaining a basic level of courtesy.I don't want to enter any further discussion, I'm afraid:life is too short.Sorry
about that.

Yours sincerely,

John Simpson.

Dear
Potkin

As a fellow subhuman Iranian, not
quite deserving the same human rights that the superior people of
Britain are entitled to, I would like to ask forgiveness for my rudeness
and beg Mr. Simpson to respond to your rude questions.

I too would like to know why the
BBC was so supportive of the Human Rights during the Islamic revolution in
1979 and is so silent today? Does Mr. Simpson believe that the Regime of
the Mullahs is more humane than the previous regime when in reality the
tortures and executions are hundred fold more?I too would like to know where he got his 80 percent figure from
and why he thinks if there is a change of regime, Iran will "sink
back into extremism"? Extremism of what? As I understand the Iranian opposition
forces want democracy, secularism and equality of rights for women and
minorities. Can a country become extremist in democracy? Does Mr. Simpson
really believe that the Islamic Republic of Iran is a moderate country that he is
fearing it will sink back into extremism?

Mr. Simpson does not want to
answer to your questions because he thinks, “life is too short”. I
wonder whether he knows that many Iranian youth pass their much shorter
lives in
prisons and under torture? Does the lives of these multitudes of young
Iranians have any value for Mr. Simpson? What about the life of this young
woman?

Or this young man?

The lives of them, as well as the lives of thousands of other
Iranian youths has been cut much shorter than Mr. Simpson's life who
probably already has lived at least three times longer than them and I
hope will continue to live even longer.
Does he have anything to say about these young Iranians and their short lives? The lives
of these Iranians are being shortened by the same regime that Mr. Simpson
and his likes want to protect.

I
post the the email address of Mr. John Simpson bellow. I invite the dear
readers to be "rude" and write
to him asking him why Iranians in his opinion do not deserve to have a
government that treat them as human beings! That do not torture them, jail
them, flog them, stone them or execute them! Forget about the Human
Rights. In which country stoning the animals, flogging them publicly,
maiming them, gouging their eyes and hanging them is allowed? This is how
the Islamic Republic of Iran, that is so dearly defended by Mr. Simpson
and the BBC, deals with its dissidents. Do Mr. Simpson, the BBC,
Jack Straw, Ema Nicholson or the MP Tam Dalyel think that the
Iranians do not deserve to be treated even according to the animal rights?
Why the BBC and the British government are so supportive of the Mullahs?
25 years of pillaging the country and selling the impoverished Iranians,
military scraps and junk at lucrative prices and taking the oil for almost
free to add quality to the long lives of people like Mr. Simpson is not enough? When greed is going to give way to humanity and
fairness?

Please be rude. Write to Mr. Simpson and ask him
for clarification. He may lose just minutes out of his precious long life but many
Iranians, because of his, and his country's support of the the Mullahs are losing their whole
lives or are rutting in squalid jails. Let us be rude
and ask Mr. Simpson and other supporters of the thugs in
Tehran for explanation.

"The
only thing necessary for the triumph of evil is for good men to do
nothing." - Edmund Burke

Thank you.

Ali
Sina

I sent the following email to Mr. Simpson and I am waiting for his
response.

Dear Mr. John Simpson,

Your curt response to the Iranian student political
leader Mr. Potkin Azarmehr calling him rude for asking impertinent
questions was published in the website faithfreedom.orgThis generated a lot of controversy and anger even among the
westerners to the extent that some believe BBC is a monopoly that
incorporates the spirit of the modern day fascism. Please take a look at
this page and read the comments that it generated by clicking on
“comment here” at the bottom of the page. We’ll be very glad to hear
your clarifications.